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Talk:Stephen Douglas
I assume you did not mean to sign your edits, TF. TR 20:36, 30 January 2009 (UTC) :Don't be so sure. I like to have my genius widely known, and in that edit, every word was a pearl. Turtle Fan 22:51, 30 January 2009 (UTC) I don't know about the "See also" that 73.37.36.19 added. I don't recall one way other the other but if the books don't explicitly say he was the namesake then I think it is too speculative to claim he was. ML4E (talk) 18:38, July 10, 2015 (UTC) :Pretty sure he was named for Douglas. It strikes me as pretty inconsequential use of the "see also"--father Martin wasn't that crucial to the overall series. TR (talk) 04:38, July 11, 2015 (UTC) :If this really is old man Martin's namesake (that's a strange choice, even from a 191 perspective he was pretty uninspiring) then that could be noted in his article. I wouldn't want it here. We've got other combinations of articles on people who were named after other people, and we have no links like this for them. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:21, July 11, 2015 (UTC) Stephen Douglas in The Disunited States of America I wonder where Stephen Douglas would be from in The Disunited States of America. He was born in Vermont in OTL and was born around the time the United States was dissolving. Vermont isn't mentioned in the novel so we don't know what happened to it. What do you guys think? -- 21:40, December 11, 2015 (UTC)Jacob Chesley the Alternate Historian Vermont, given its 1780s history, probably went back to being a separate nation. Maybe Douglas was Consul/President of it. Not that this is useful for a no-speculation db, but it does make you wish HT had Tolkienised his worlds more often than he fills them with irritatingly detailed run-on descriptions of whiny characters that no one cares about. Just like how in Southern Victory he repeatedly fails to tell us who was President during a crucial historical event, or even what year the event happened in, but he unfailingly provides details to remind us how superior CSA tobacco is to its USA counterpart.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 21:49, December 11, 2015 (UTC) :In the highly unlikely event that Vermont maintained its independence, it would have been an obscure backwater, unlikely to produce anyone who could achieve such continent-wide renown. In the far more likely event that New York absorbed Vermont by force shortly after the union disintegrated, you could have a situation where Vermonters came to terms with the new order relatively quickly, and by the time Douglas came of age, he self-identified as a New Yorker. He gets involved in NY politics and finds himself President of New York (perhaps after besting Seward in some grand power struggle), thus finding himself at the helm of what would surely have been one of North America's dominant powers at the time. From that perch he could have a much greater impact. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:08, December 11, 2015 (UTC) ::How do we even know that Vermont would get taken over by New York? If New York tried to invade Vermont after the US dissolved in the early 1800s, New Hampshire and Massachusetts would likely send their armies (if they had any, that is) into the Vermont Republic to prevent it from falling into New York's hands. I see Vermont as being part of New England than of New York, though probably no longer independent. Vermont became independent from both New Hampshire and New York in 1777. If the Constitutional Convention failed in 1787, it would be unlikely for Vermont to join the US as its 14th state in 1791, and remained independent into the early 1800s. There's no information of what happened to New Hampshire after the dissolution of the US in the early 1800s. Is it an independent nation? Did it join Massachusetts? I guess no know knows! I know that Maine is still probably still part of Massachusetts, though. -- 20:50, December 13, 2015 (UTC)Jacob Chesley the Alternate Historian :Your account of the Republic of Vermont's history is a gross oversimplification. In the colonial period, New York and New Hampshire both claimed its territory for their own. The crown decided in New York's favor in 1764, but this legality was difficult to enforce, and many in both NH and VT simply ignored it. :Following the Battle of Saratoga, in which Vermonters played such a key role, New Hampshire dropped its claim in the name of continental solidarity. Vermont then sent a delegation to Philadelphia, but the New York delegates demanded that it not be seated. The rest of Congress dared not alienate so powerful a state at such a critical time, and the Vermonters were turned away. :Vermont declared independence in 1777 on the grounds that it was necessary rather than desirable. Most Vermonters would have preferred to join the United States, and even took as the Republic's motto a Latin phrase meaning "The Fourteenth Star." The US government kept ducking the question of Vermont's status until very late in the war, when Vermont threatened to negotiate a separate peace if it were not recognized. I don't recall the date of this, but reliable sources spotted Ethan Allen in Quebec City shortly before Yorktown. At this point, New York was finally compelled to drop its claim against Vermont, but with great reluctance. :Under those circumstances I find it hard to imagine that New York would continue to consider itself bound by such a reluctant acquiescence once the Union failed and each state began setting its own foreign policy. New Hampshire might feel the same way, but any troops she sent into Vermont would be all but guaranteed to face armed conflict with New York forces, and they would certainly lose. Massachusetts would be unlikely to support expansionism by New Hampshire, considering that even regular old NH was already large enough to disrupt its territorial integrity to the point that it was not contiguous; and indeed, I don't doubt that, sooner or later, Boston began regarding the Granite State as a wolf regards a doe. :There's an off chance that Vermont might be granted a reprieve, if it could sell not just New Hampshire but also Massachusetts and Connecticut on an alliance to keep New York out of New England. New York might back down in the face of such a unified front, or it might challenge the alliance and lose, though I don't find either all that likely. Even if it did, Vermont's continued sovereignty would be contingent on New England solidarity. But that would not have lasted long: We know that there was a major regional war, and that Massachusetts was led to victory in that war by a man who was already an adult as of the POD. And if Vermont came through that crisis intact . . . she's still a tiny backwater, affording very few opportunities for even a political genius to make his mark on history. :There's also the possibility that Douglas's parents fled the conflict zone, and Stephen came of age somewhere else. That notion covers such a wide range of possibilities that I can't even see where to begin speculating. Turtle Fan (talk) 22:18, December 13, 2015 (UTC) Deletion Since ML4E went rogue and mentioned Douglas on the Talk:John Bell page, I've marked Douglas for deletion, too. I agree with ML4E's proposal that the LatD subsection be moved, and I would also add that the JS section should also be moved, since it's more of a generic comparison. The rest can stay--that 191 and DSA revere Douglas a hell of a lot more than we do is telling about both, as is the fact that he was a GG-NAU. TR (talk) 18:13, July 24, 2016 (UTC) :The three were interconnected much like Amundsen and Scott but I will try to avoid Palin around in future. ML4E (talk) 20:27, July 24, 2016 (UTC) ::I was being tongue-in-cheek. I don't mind jumping around for interrelated articles such as this. Seems more form over function to insist on going alphabetically in every circumstance. TR (talk) 20:30, July 24, 2016 (UTC) :::No problem. I took it that way. ML4E (talk) 20:41, July 24, 2016 (UTC) ::::The LatA section is covered by my defense of Bell, of course. Otherwise, I agree with dumping JS and keeping 191 and DSA. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:55, July 24, 2016 (UTC) I wonder if a "Stephen Douglas (Joe Steele)" redirect to his "References" entry should be created along with categorizing it as a "JS Character". That way, anyone perusing the cat will see there is a reference to Douglas and can click on it if they are curious. ML4E (talk) 18:57, July 26, 2016 (UTC) :I don't oppose it per se. I think we experimented with redirects in other cases and it created some confusion at one point, but since it won't go to Douglas proper, it might work this time. TR (talk) 20:47, July 26, 2016 (UTC) :My latest view is that the "See Also" is the way to go but to also restore the story character categories rather than create story specific redirects. That way, people can get the OTL info and then click on the reference if they want the story specific info. ML4E (talk) 19:37, July 28, 2016 (UTC) Lit Comment in DSA Douglas is name checked as a off the cuff joke. It doesn't need a lit comm. TR (talk) 17:41, December 10, 2016 (UTC)